Column: Too many good choices; a dinner dilemma

I’m not one for looking a gift pizza in the mouth.

The other night, my wife went to a garden party. That is, she went to a party celebrating the anniversary of her community garden. She came back with a pizza. Apparently, they had ordered too many for the party.

Seeing the pizza box made me happy and excited. I had been waiting to have dinner with her, and it was getting kind of late and I was hungry. Pizza seemed like just the thing.

Only when I pulled off a slice to reheat in the toaster oven did I remember that I had already started to make a different dinner.

I had planned to make tandoori chicken. And I may as well admit it now: I did not actually marinate the chicken myself. If I had, I probably would have remembered it.

We had purchased a vacuum-packed, tandoori-marinated chicken at a grocery store. I know that I always say you should make foods like this yourself, and I often do. But sometimes I do not.

The chicken was still in the refrigerator because I wanted it to be fresh from the oven when I served it. But the rice — basmati rice — was already made and sitting in the rice cooker when the pizza came through the door.

This fact set off a surprisingly complicated series of mental calculations, especially given the fact that it was nearly 9 p.m. and the person making the calculations was hungry.

The calculations went along these lines:

Both the pizza and the rice were freshly made. Each would make an excellent lunch to bring to work the next day, though each would be equally less fresh. Leftover pizza really isn’t as good as everyone says it is (unless it is heated and served with a fried or poached egg on top for breakfast), and leftover rice gets a little dry.

However, tandoori chicken is just as good the next day, if not better. And while this isn’t relevant, it is also especially good the next morning when scrambled with eggs or folded into an omelet.

Also to be considered is the fact that the tandoori chicken is in a vacuum pack, meaning it will stay fresh for another couple of weeks. Plus, it still had to be cooked and I wasn’t getting any less hungry.

While I was weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each choice, my wife threw a metaphorical wrench into my calculations. “Don’t forget, we also have pasta in the fridge,” she said, unhelpfully.

Oh, yeah. The pasta in the fridge. It wasn’t just pasta, it was farfalle — also known as bow-tie pasta — with lemon, minced-arugula, Parmesan and pistachio sauce. And yes, it tasted that good.

So to recap, the choices were pizza, rice (with tandoori chicken) or pasta. Carbohydrates, carbohydrates or carbohydrates.

Incidentally, I am trying to lose a little stubborn weight and lower my blood-sugar levels. The one thing I should especially be eating less of is carbohydrates.

I reconfigured my calculations, adding another variable into the equation. I took the derivative of the coefficient, carried the 2, and came to a definitive answer.

It was pizza. I ate the pizza.

Tandoori chicken with fresh basmati rice and fancy pasta have their place, but c’mon. Pizza is pizza.